| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: appearance of mystery? If you think your daughter at all attached to
Reginald, her objecting to Sir James could not less deserve to be attended
to than if the cause of her objecting had been a consciousness of his folly
; and why should your ladyship, at any rate, quarrel with my brother for an
interference which, you must know, it is not in his nature to refuse when
urged in such a manner?"
"His disposition, you know, is warm, and he came to expostulate with me;
his compassion all alive for this ill-used girl, this heroine in distress!
We misunderstood each other: he believed me more to blame than I really
was; I considered his interference less excusable than I now find it. I
have a real regard for him, and was beyond expression mortified to find
Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: my catechism. He who loves is orthodox. The oath of Henri IV.
places sanctity somewhere between feasting and drunkenness.
Ventre-saint-gris! I don't belong to the religion of that oath.
Woman is forgotten in it. This astonishes me on the part
of Henri IV. My friends, long live women! I am old, they say;
it's astonishing how much I feel in the mood to be young. I should
like to go and listen to the bagpipes in the woods. Children who
contrive to be beautiful and contented,--that intoxicates me.
I would like greatly to get married, if any one would have me.
It is impossible to imagine that God could have made us for anything
but this: to idolize, to coo, to preen ourselves, to be dove-like,
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: and the affairs of your masters will go better than ever.
O ye exchange women! (our right worshipful representatives that
are to be) be not so griping in the sale of your ware as your
predecessors, but consider that the nation, like a spend-thrift
heir, has run out: Be likewise a little more continent in your
tongues than you are at present, else the length of debates will
spoil your dinners.
You housewifely good women, who not preside over the
confectionary, (henceforth commissioners of the Treasury) be so
good as to dispense the sugar-plumbs of the Government with a
more impartial and frugal hand.
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